MOTU Filmation He-Man and the Masters of the Universe coming to Blu-Ray in Germany!

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Filmation He-Man and the Masters of the Universe coming to Blu-Ray in Germany!

Just found this out from a Blu-Ray forum that I frequent.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the original Filmation cartoon is coming to Blu-Ray in Germany.

They are listed on the German Amazon site (Amazon "dot" de.... I can't post the actual link here). There's a listing for Season 1 and a separate listing for Season 2. Apparently there is an English audio track, but I'm trying to find out if it is region free or not.

I doubt that the quality is going to be much better than what we have on the existing DVDs since the original masters were discarded and Hallmark transferred everything to standard def digital years ago. But it does appear that each season is 1 disc, so that's 65 episodes on a single disc (which will line up with the quality not being much improved, if at all). If these are region free, I will be tempted to get them.

EDIT: From some info posted on that blu-ray site it appears that it is region B locked, which won't work on North American Blu-Ray players. Doh!

EDIT again (UPDATE - 7/31/2012):

Another site (Bluray-disc "dot" de) has some more info, some of which conflicts with the Amazon info. The main conflict is that they list the sets as being 6-disc sets as opposed to 1-disc. I'm not sure which is the true number.

These are the specs, as listed on that site, for Season 1 (translated into English... I don't speak German, but it's obvious what these meant):

The Season 2 specs are the same except for the running time, which is 1430 minutes.

They also have tentative covers posted on the site. They don't appear to be final since they both have the word "Precover" watermarked over the image, and for some reason both of them say "Season One" on the cover, even though the image with He-Man on Battle Cat is the one that was shown on the Season 2 listing:

The issue of how many discs are in the set raises the most questions. From what we know/have been told, the original masters of the series no longer exist. Hallmark supposedly destroyed them years ago after converting the show (along with many other Filmation shows) to digital, but permanently locked in Standard Definition.

While one disc seemed kind of low since even in SD putting 65 episodes on a single Blu-Ray disc would seem to be pushing it, 6 discs (if that is the accurate number... I have no way of knowing which is right and which is wrong, or if either of them is accurate) almost seems overkill if these aren't even truly in hi-def. I would think they easily could have fit 20 episodes on a single disc in SD. Maybe they are just upscaled to the best they can be, with no compression that isn't already present in the source material.

Either way, I am interested, but still annoyed that I can't play these in US Blu-Ray players. I REALLY hope that a US release comes out. It would also be cool if the She-Ra series and "The Secret of the Sword" were to get the same treatment.

And of course it would be awesome if the 200X series were to get released in Hi-Def, since that could actually be in true Hi-Def. I just hope if that ever happens, Mill Creek puts the proper "Masters of the Universe VS. The Snakemen" opening in front of the Snakemen episodes. That intro was present on the BCI DVDs, but the Mill Creek release replaced it with the standard "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" intro that all of the rest of the episodes had.